Who is Mike Thorton? A suave, sometimes sarcastic flirt? A focused professional who does the right thing, no matter the cost? An impatient, short-tempered, aggressive alpha-male? While this may sound a little bit schizophrenic, the answer is simple enough: he’s all of these things. As an operative with Alpha Protocol, a shadow agency that allows the government to conduct covert ops with full deniability, Mike Thorton is whatever kind of man you want him to be.

But does Obsidian Entertainment’s super-spy RPG manage to shift personalities as effortlessly as its protagonist? Can Alpha Protocol overcome a glut of technical issues long enough for us to peel off the mask and see if the core game underneath is really worthwhile? That’s what we’re here today to find out.

Alpha Protocol tries hard to be all things to all people. Want to play a modern-day ninja, silently infiltrating enemy bases and dispatching armed guards with nothing more than throat punches and judo throws? You can do that. Want to run-and-gun like a crazy special forces badass? You can do that too. A wide variety of customizable weapons and gadgets, along with several skill tracks to level up, give you the option to custom-tailor your version of Agent Thorton however you like. If you want to just jump right into things, three “classes” with pre-assigned stats are available from the start.

But the skill points and loadout are only half of the equation. After all, what would an RPG be without character interaction? Alpha Protocol uses a social interface called the Dynamic Stance System (DSS) to pick from three different conversational positions: suave, aggressive, and professional. Rather than actually selecting specific lines of dialog like a traditional conversation tree, you instead direct the flow based on words mapped to each stance that give an indication of what sort of reply you want to give. Any of this sounding at all familiar to any of you? I could have sworn I’ve seen something similar to this before in another recent game series…

Indeed, as the saying goes, “if you’re going to steal, steal from the best” and Obsidian did just that. Okay, perhaps “steal” is a bit harsh. Let’s just say that it’s very obvious that Alpha Protocol borrows from and is heavily influenced by BioWare’s Mass Effect. Not that this is a bad template to work from, mind you – Mass Effect was great – and some aspects of it actually improve on that game’s base model; the DSS system, for instance. The window to pick a response stance is timed, forcing you to make decisions on dialog (and sometimes critical actions like executing someone) quickly. In conjunction with that, there are no do-overs in conversations. Did you miss your chance to ask a critical question? Too bad – the game autosaves, locking you onto the path you’ve chosen. There are no second chances in espionage. That is, unless you want to be one of those jerks who quits the game and reloads before the scene is over, and even then you’d better be fast. Still, I appreciate a game that enforces the consequences of choice on a player.

But more notably, the game also copies one of the game’s worst technical issues and exacerbates it. Texture pop-in is near-constant – the omnipresent levels of which make the first Mass Effect look tame in comparison. Also, there was a constant visual distortion and artifacting in a particular set of story cutscenes (the wraparounds with Halbech’s Henry Leland) that I originally thought was a deliberate filter rather than a glitch. It did disappear during the final scenes with Leland, but I still went back and forth with myself several times during the course of the game, wondering if it was intentional or yet another bit of lazy QA. To this day I’m still uncertain. The environments aren’t great and the lipsynch is questionable at times as well. Alpha Protocol looks rough – there’s not much point in denying it.

And for a game that was delayed as often as it was, the amount of problems AP sports borders on the inexcusable. Want a list? How about the fact that during my first playthrough, the initial level of the Awareness stealth power was broken. It Did. Not. Work. I would hit the button to activate it, the power’s icon would flash briefly on-screen and nothing would happen. The power wouldn’t be used and enter its cooldown/refresh period, but neither would it actually, you know, do anything. Higher versions of the power worked correctly, however, and it also worked correctly on a subsequent playthrough with a new character. Also, more than once I had environmental interaction points refuse to work. The onscreen button prompt would not appear at all, forcing a reload to an earlier checkpoint to resolve it. Enemies would get caught on geometry. I would get caught on geometry (usually in the middle of a brawl). Frustration abounded.

Glitches notwithstanding, there were also a number of gameplay issues that bothered me. Pure stealth seems to be hard to pull off in the game’s early stages; even with points in stealth powers, guards seem to spot you way too easily. The camera is also a bit too tight behind Thorton’s back, hamstringing your peripheral vision. Gunplay is an iffy prospect. Much like the first Mass Effect (or Fallout 3 when played outside of the VATS system), your shots don’t hit based on reticle placement alone. Success is based on a behind-the-scenes number crunch like any “pen & paper” RPG which makes shooting a near-pointless waste of time and noise unless you’ve invested some ranks in it. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem if you could stop time (like Fallout 3 or ME) and take the opportunity to size up your foes, planning which sequence of attacks would be best, but you don’t have that luxury in Alpha‘s real-time combat. Sure, there are some powers which can be utilized to allow you to do something similar, but is it worth having a 2-3 minute cooldown for each 20 seconds (or one shot – whichever comes first) of battlefield assessment? I was forced to play out some endgame boss battles in just this fashion during my initial run because I decided to focus almost exclusively on stealth and hand-to-hand. Learn from my mistakes: invest at least three or four ranks in a long-range weapon (like the assault rifle) before the last set of missions.

But before you think it sounds like I’m solely trashing the game, allow me to explain a couple of things. First, I’m ridiculously forgiving when it comes to visual issues – graphics matter the least to me out of everything in a game. Secondly, when I’m reviewing a title, the question in the end always comes down to “Did I have fun?” Isn’t that why we play games, after all? And in the end, I did. Like falling for the proverbial ugly girl with the great personality, I got sucked into Alpha Protocol so much that after a while I didn’t even see its less-than-spectacular looks anymore.

I liked the fact that some missions were purely story driven, requiring you to simply interact with characters to advance the plot. The story itself – strictly a B-grade spy drama otherwise – is likewise at least good enough to warrant moderate replayability, as the order you visit locations (and the intel you find or purchase on the black market) affects how the missions and and narrative unfold. And the game itself does indeed play differently if you sink the majority of your skill points into weapons, rather than stealth or gadgets; not quite a proper third-person shooter, but something similar. In fact, I would wager that, with proper point distribution, it plays better as a third-person shooter than Fallout 3 did as a first-person shooter (thought that might not be the biggest praise, now that I think about it). Characters who loved you the first time through may hate your guts when you take a different dialog positions with them, and even that isn’t always a bad thing, as different levels of friendship (or dislike) grant you various small perks that affect how your agent operates. And speaking of the characters, there are definitely some colorful ones in AP. I challenge you not be amused with the Boogie Nights-esque showdown with drug-fueled, 80′s-crazed Russian mobster, Konstantin Brayko; disturbed by the conspiracy buff ramblings of Shanghai contact Steven Heck (voiced by Nathan Drake himself, Nolan North); and perhaps amused, disturbed and maybe even a little aroused by German mercenary/tiny tank-top aficionado/professional cougar, “SIE.”

Overall, there are a lot of compelling reasons I should dislike Alpha Protocol. And yet, I don’t. I powered through the game and almost immediately restarted a new character because I wanted to see how it handled when approached from a totally different play style. This is something I rarely (if ever) do – even when reviewing a game. It has a rough kind of charm, much like Mike Thorton himself when you lean heavily on the “Suave” DSS option: you may roll your eyes at the cheesy come-ons and groan at the sarcastic one-liners, but little by little you find that you’re liking it, almost in spite of yourself.

Alpha Protocol, echoing its apparently troubled development cycle, seems very much like a child of a dysfunctional home. Sharp edges and disciplinary problems on the surface, but a fundamentally good kid underneath who just needs a little patience and understanding. The technical glitches are the only thing keeping me from pushing this one just over the line into “Recommended” territory. A post-release patch would be great, but I’m not holding my breath on it. Still, it’s worth checking out if you know what you’re getting yourself into.

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Things We Liked: Definitely replayable. Crazy, memorable characters. The DSS system. Ambitious, if flawed. Best use of Autograph’s “Turn Up the Radio” EVER!

Things We Disliked: Technical glitches rendering the game occasionally unplayable without a reload. Tetchy stealth mechanics early on (you become an invincible super-ninja later, however). Weapons are pointless without at least three skill points each. Serious balance issues. Nigh-constant texture pop-in.

Target Audience: Forgiving Mass Effect fans. People who aren’t graphics whores. People dying for non-supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi RPGs (see Yakuza 3 for more). Anybody who wants to indulge their inner Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne or James Bond (JB seems to be the universal set of spy initials – why are you bucking the trend, Mike Thorton?? Where’s Jack Black when you need him?).

(Alpha Protocol – Developer: Obsidian Entertainment. Publisher: Sega of America. Available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – Xbox 360 version reviewed. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. New to CFD!’s reviews? Read our explanation here.)